Reverse Capital loop

Today I rode the Capital loop, a reasonably frequent traveled route. However, there was something about wind conditions that caused me to change me mind very early in the ride and to ride the loop in the reverse direction of the usual trip. Reversing the ride means that I have to climb a couple of fairly large hills that I coast down when traveling the usual direction. But as we all know, any ride that begins and ends in my garage has zero net gain or loss of altitude. If I give up advantages in one area of the ride I have to be gaining it back somewhere else.

One of the large gains was the stretch of Como from the top of the railroad overpass near Western all the way down to Rice Street. It feels uphill going the other direction but I was a bit surprised to find out how much down hill it is and how easy it was.

The other big thing is that I got to ride the length of Summit Avenue in the direction where the avenue is going predominantly down, towards the river. Further today it was not only downhill, it was down wind.

It was another perfect day. Today for the first time there was a tiny short period when it actually felt hot.

Coming the opposite direction as usual I arrived at the farm campus quite late in the ride. The cows were still there. Today is going to be one of my last chances to ride over there for a bit and I am pleased to report that the word for today at the cows is "serene".It was an extremely pleasant ride down Summit but even so I detoured just a tiny bit for this, the SteppingStone Theatre on North Victoria Street.This is another in the series of not a church anymore. The building was completed in 1908 as the First Methodist Church and later served for many years as something apparently called the Saints Volodymyr and Olga Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

Eventually the church business failed at this location. I suspect that the final failure was due to the gradual development of a shortage of orthodox Ukrainians. There was a serious attempt in about 2002 to demolish this building. A developer attempted to buy the building intending to redevelop the site as part of a proposed condominium project. The neighborhood, the law school across the street, historic preservationists, and lots of other people objected and that plan was scrapped. The site was saved, and the building is now a theater (although they do spell it "theatre").

It is a nice old building and it reminded me a lot of this one which is at least as nice and quite a bit older:This is the Théâtre Graslin, the city opera house in Nantes. Note that this also continues the series on opera houses. The opera house was opened in 1788 and is named after the previous owner of the land on which it was built, Jean-Louis Graslin. After a major fire in 1796 the house was reconstructed and was ready for use during the 1811 visit to the city by Emperor Napoléon 1st. It continues in use for opera and other performances.

And as long as we are in Nantes, here is a continuation of yesterday's column series.That's Place Louis XVI in Nantes. The column was erected in 1790 with the statue of Louis XVI put in place in 1823. Louis XVI was the last king of France, the husband of Marie Antoinette. Place Louis XVI is located just outside of Porte Saint-Pierre. Porte Saint-Pierre was the gate in the city wall constructed to control access to the highway to Paris. The city wall was constructed in the 15th century on the foundation of a 4th century Gallo-Roman wall. That city gate and a few wall remnants in scattered locations around the city are about all that remain of the wall.